


The Wells of Time

by Joshamus



Category: Original Work
Genre: Action/Adventure, Adventure, Gen, Paradox, Science Fiction, Time Travel
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-13
Updated: 2021-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-21 03:55:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 13,915
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30015771
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Joshamus/pseuds/Joshamus
Summary: When a failing university student is dragged into an adventure to save all of reality as he knows it, he will find that time travel really is possible. But could it be that he is more important to the web of time than he realises?
Comments: 1
Kudos: 1





	1. Prologue

Captain Karaxis stared at his desk, overflowing with documents and files. The Nexus around him was empty, all of his colleagues were out on assignment. The serenity was odd for a place that was usually teeming with life. The Nexus was the hub out of which his organisation operated and was usually filled with people rushing around as new paradoxes opened and closed throughout time and space.

Karaxis was a Sustainer. His job was to spot paradoxes and errors in the time-space continuum and put a stop to them. This was usually filled with a mobile phone left in medieval England or someone going back to the early 20th century to kill Adolf Hitler, the latter made up over half of his assignments. While this was usually a manageable role, the paradoxes had been getting more and more frequent. It had gotten to the point where it was becoming harder and harder to cope with and more and more Sustainers were out of the Nexus at a time.

Karaxis dragged his fingers through his hair, he wondered why this was even happening, a thought that seemed to be flowing through his mind on repeat in the last few days. He had been forced into leadership at the Nexus with seemingly no choice when the previous captain had died, someone he had cared for. With the amount of Sustainers that had been lost in recent weeks, many of them his friends, it was decided that the captaincy should go to him. He sometimes wondered why; he was still relatively new to this job.

He stretched his arms above his head and decided it was time to take a break away from his desk before the thought of everything he had lost overcame him again. Coffee, he concluded was the answer and grabbed his mug off the desk. Standing up, he noticed the silence of the room. It was almost completely soundless; he couldn't even hear the whirring of the temporal engines that kept the Nexus suspended in its time pocket. The Nexus was not part of the normal time stream. It existed in an outside plane that had been created by minds far more intelligent than Karaxis', they had made it so that paradoxes could be detected almost before they happened so that Sustainers could get to them before anything could go horribly wrong.

Karaxis glanced around the room once again, there was something not quite right about how quiet it was. He couldn't hear anything at all. In fact, the silence seemed to be getting stronger. Deeper. It felt like it was surrounding him. Karaxis took another step across the bullpen but then it changed. The silence was no longer just silence, it became a pain that reached into his mind. Karaxis had been trained to fend off psychic attacks but this was something different. Something far stronger than he had ever encountered before. He dropped to his knees as the pain became unbearable, his mug clattering to the floor. He held his head in his hands, his head feeling like it was about to explode. And then it stopped. The silence returned but this time there was a whisper. He couldn't hear anything at first, just like before, but then it began to emerge from somewhere in the Nexus.

"Karaxissssssss" the whisper was getting louder with every repetition and there was something about the voice that sent a deep coldness through his body. "Karaxissssss" came the voice again. This time with more urgency and loud enough that Karaxis now knew why it was making him feel so strange. The voice wasn't coming from the Nexus at all. It wasn't even coming from the real world, but from within his own mind.

At last, Karaxis managed to push his fear aside and respond to the voice that was still calling out his name. "Who are you?" he asked. "How are you inside my mind? That shouldn't even be possible, the Nexus has defences against that."

"Your defences are of no matter to us; we are of a higher power than what you are used to dealing with. We are not of your universe."

"But who are you?" Karaxis asked again, his curiosity now overriding his fear.

"Our name is not important, but our mission is. We come to you with a request Captain."

Karaxis wondered if these beings were able to hear what he was thinking whilst they were inside his mind and despite never asking the question, he got his answer.

"Yes, we can, Karaxis" the answer came, Karaxis could feel these strange beings laughing at him as he jumped, freaked out by the possibility of his own thoughts no longer being his own.

"Ok, I'll humour you, what is your request".

"We have noticed your existence is faltering. Rifts are beginning to form in the very fabric of your universe and if allowed to continue, your entire existence will implode. This must be stopped if your race and all others wish to continue living. "

"I know, that is what we do, but it's been getting harder and harder, paradoxes have been getting more frequent recently and it is becoming a lot for us to handle."

"That's because you have been approaching it all wrong." The voice replied. "You have been fixing issues but that is only a temporary response, you are simply prolonging the inevitable. To fix it properly. You need to create some damage of your own. Create enough small tears and they will fold in on themselves, fixing the issues entirely. Think of it like building muscle, the muscle must be damaged in order to be repaired and improved, the fabric of your dimension is not all that different."

This was Madness! Karaxis thought as he continued to listen to what the voice was telling him. He couldn't damage the timeline after all he had done to repair it, even if doing so had only brought him suffering and loss.

"It is not madness, it is necessary" the voice replied to another unspoken thought.

"Stop doing that!" Karaxis yelled.

"it is not our fault; your race feels the need to think everything before they say it." The voice replied mockingly.

Karaxis resigned to the fact that he was no longer going to have a solitary thought while the voice was inside his head and decided to return to the reason it was here in the first place. "Ok, but surely you see that this doesn't make any sense?" he asked. "If we create more paradoxes regardless of how big they are, we are only going to make matters worse. There is no way I can go along with this insane plan of yours."

"This insane plan as you put it is the only one that will save your universe and everything you hold dear."

"You have no idea the loss I have suffered trying to save reality." Karaxis snapped. "Now you are telling me I should throw all of that away, forget everyone that has laid down their life for this and do the complete opposite?"

"To save the rest. Yes. Let us show you."

Suddenly Karaxis felt a wave of nausea hit him and he felt as if he was going to be sick, the walls around him seemed to be melting into blackness. The Nexus was gone and in its place was stood a small child. She couldn't have been more than 8 years old. Her clothes were in tatters and her hair and face were full of dust and soot. "Hello?" Karaxis said tentatively, but the child remained silent as if he wasn't even there. "Are you ok?" he tried again this time reaching out to touch her shoulder, but his hand drifted straight through, like he was a ghost unable to connect with the world.

As he brushed through her, the girl began to move toward him, a look of hopelessness painted across her face. She took another step and passed through Karaxis, confirming his suspicion that he wasn't really here. Wherever here was. It was only at that moment that Karaxis realised he had been completely blind of what was around him, the child had captivated him in a way that he couldn't explain. With each step the girl took away behind him, the world became clearer. He could now see past the fog that surrounded him. The air was filled with smoke and was lit by an eerie orange glow. The buildings around him were on fire, not a single building had escaped the flames and the debris did little to hide the bodies that littered the street. Karaxis was unsure of where exactly he was but there wasn't much left.

Karaxis turned to see if the damage continued along the street but what he saw was neither an intact street nor a damaged one. Instead, there seemed to be a hole in the sky where the rest of the street should have been. The hole was roaring with a sound that his mind couldn't comprehend and seemed to be getting bigger with every passing second. Now it made sense, this girl wasn't just wandering aimlessly, lost in a broken city. She was giving herself up to the rift that was pulling her whole reality apart. A few more steps and she would be engulfed. Karaxis choked back the lump that had formed in his throat. There was nothing he could do but watch as the girl continued to walk towards the end of her existence.

Suddenly, the girl surged forward with a scream, now approaching the rift at a dangerous pace as if being dragged by an unseen hand. Karaxis charged towards her, he knew there was nothing he could do to stop her being pulled beyond the rift, but he had to try. As the girl reached the precipice of the rift, time slowed and Karaxis could see her face as her feet disappeared behind her. He couldn't hear anything over the roaring of the rift but the look on her face was one of pure agony. Karaxis reached for her hand one final time but it was too late. She was gone. And so was the city and the rift. Replaced once again by the Nexus. "What was that?" Karaxis whispered, the shake in his voice matching the way his whole body seemed to be quivering uncontrollably.

"We simply showed you what will become of your universe if you fail to save it."

"Who was that girl?"

"One of many who will share the same fate." The voice replied.

Karaxis' hands had finally begun to settle as had his mind. "You are telling me that in order to avoid that, I must damage the timeline in small ways."

"Correct"

"And they will only be small changes, nothing that will rewrite history entirely?"

"Yes"

Karaxis turned to the wall of the Nexus, emblazoned with the crest of the Sustainers. "Forgive me" he whispered. There was no way he could let that vision become reality. The face of the girl was seared into his mind and he couldn't cope with the idea of that happening to millions of other people, including those he loved. He had already lost too many.

"Fine, what do I do?" almost before he had even said it, he had his answer. He seemed to have the knowledge in his head already, as if someone had just explained it to him. Tapping a series of commands into the device on his wrist, he opened up a portal to the location in his mind. As he stepped through, his mind was flooded with a wave of accomplishment that was not his own. There was no turning back now he thought.


	2. I

Dean Wells didn't mind hearing his own name, but by the third call, it was beginning to lose its effect. Moving his head out of his arms, Dean opened his eyes and glanced around the wide lecture hall from the dark corner in which he was under the impression that he could sleep undisturbed. Clearly not. There wasn't a pair of eyes in the room that wasn't on him and more concerning was the glare he was getting from the lecturer who looked exhausted with having to deal with this at 9am on a Thursday morning.

"Mr. Wells, if you're going to attend these classes, I would advise you were conscious, you may find you remember some of the content that way." The sarcasm in Dr Williams' words was not lost on the class or Dean and the light sniggers that spread around the room only served to irritate him further.

Picking up his rucksack and his untouched notepad, Dean got up to leave. "Perhaps if you were a little less boring, I would find it easier to stay conscious" he replied sharply. However, putting air quotes around his lecturers' words was clearly a step too far. With a look that suggested he would have happily throttled Dean had he not been stood on the back row, Dr William's pointed towards the door with a hand shaking with rage and quietly asked him to leave. Dean tried to respond with a similar level of rage by slamming the door but was thwarted by the no-slam mechanism, much to the amusement of the whole class still in the lecture hall.

Dean was not a bad person, he never had been, he just found that he could never keep his attention on anything. He wanted to succeed but he just found that his lack of concentration and motivation only served to annoy people and make his life difficult at every turn.

As he walked through the wide hallways of the university, pushing his way through a sea of backpacks and coffee fueled students, he wondered if this was going to be another example of something that he'd fail to follow through with. He was starting to think his life would never go anywhere, if he couldn't even make it through a degree, he was certainly never going to do anything special.

By the time he had reached the small café in the heart of the university campus and ordered himself an overpriced and under heated coffee, his phone started to go mental in his pocket. Naturally, the second the commotion had calmed down in the lecture hall, messages began to fly around the university. A mass of these messages had reached Sam Tovey. Sam was Dean's best mate but never failed to try and kick him into gear. Sitting down with his coffee, Dean swiped to open his phone and clicked on one of the many messages that was waiting for him. He decided to go for the only one that didn't seem to have laughing faces on the end of it or a video of himself attached.

"Dude, what the hell happened in Dr William's class?"

With a sigh, Dean began to type out his response, trying to suppress his annoyance that the story had already reached Sam. "I fell asleep, he's so boring! "

Sam's response came back almost instantly, and Dean knew that he had disappointed him again. "Come on man, you've got to stop doing things like this, how are you going to pass this degree if you're sleeping through your lectures?"

Dean couldn't be bothered to reply to this because he knew Sam would only continue to give him a lecture and he'd already fallen asleep through one of those today. Not only that, but Dean knew deep down that Sam was right. Sam, however, had other ideas and Dean's phone vibrated with yet another message from him.

"You should go and apologize to Dr Williams? Maybe then he'll actually let you into next week's lecture." Dean read the message and slammed his phone back down on the table next to his still steaming coffee.

Taking a sip, Dean began to consider whether he even wanted to be at the university anyway. He had thought that a history degree would be perfect, He'd always had a keen interest in history, and he loved thinking about the almost impossible consideration of people and events that happened thousands of years ago. The battles and the politics, the kings and the peasants. But even with this he still couldn't focus, the words slid into his mind and cantered back out of the other side of his head. This wasn't helped by the horrifically boring lecturer in front of him every other Thursday morning. Dr Williams had been lecturing at the university for almost 20 years and in that time, he had not managed to improve his enthusiasm, to an uninitiated mind, it would seem that Dr Williams simply did not want to be there, to an initiated mind, the thought process was not much different. However, the university continued to put their trust in him, and students continued to be bored by him every week.

Dean's phone buzzed on the table once again, this time almost throwing itself off as it continued to buzz with a phone call. Dean picked up the phone and glanced at the cracked screen. With the amount of damage already done to the glass, he wondered if the three-foot drop to the floor would perhaps increase the worth. Finally, he answered the phone. The shrill noise on the other end of the line was that of his mother's voice. Dean knew that this would not be an enjoyable phone call.

"Dean, what is this I hear about you falling asleep and leaving your lecture?" The volume of Claire Wells' questioning tone was enough to turn a few heads on nearby tables. Half an hour, Dean noted, this was clearly all it took for anything to get back to his mother. Sometimes he wondered if she had him followed around.

"Hello Dean, how are you?" Dean replied sarcastically. He knew this was probably a bad idea, but he just didn't care anymore after the morning he was having.

"Don't get snarky with me young man! Your father and I didn't send you to that university to become an embarrassment. I was hoping it might help you to finally grow up and be mature enough to join your father." Dean's father was a big city financial advisor and by all accounts, he was doing quite well, he advised for a few high-profile names, politicians and boring rich tycoons and it was Claire's wishes that Dean follow in his footsteps and had compromised with the history degree in the hopes that it would made Dean a little more focused. Dean, however, could not think of anything more boring.

"Have you ever thought that perhaps that's not what I want to do, mum?" Dean replied, feeling the anger bubbling inside his stomach. "Perhaps I don't want to be a boring penny counter like dad." Dean knew he had gone too far as soon as the words left his mouth, but he couldn't act like it wasn't the truth.

The other end of the line was silent for a moment before his mother replied with a withdrawn tone that suggested she was doing her best not to lose it with her son. "Fine, then what are you planning to do with your life other than waste it watching those ridiculous Sci-Fi movies." As well as his interest in history, Dean also loved sci-fi, particularly anything to do with time travel, and right now he was wishing he could travel to a time period that was not inhabited by his mother. The question his mother had just asked, however, finally sunk in. What was he going to do if he wasn't going to go and work with his dad? The short answer was that he had no idea.

Dean tried to calm down before replying to his mother and fill in the awkward silence that was being created from this sudden realization. "Look mum, I'm trying, I really am. I just can't seem to find my thing. It's like nothing fits."

Samantha sighed, clearly trying to calm the conversation down as well. "Fine, just please go and talk to your professor, that might at least help you pass this course and then maybe you'll find your thing." Dean could hear the exasperation in her voice as she repeated his own words but decided not to bite.

"OK, I'll see what I can do" he replied. "Talk to you later mum." Before she could berate him about something else, Dean put the phone down with more of a slam than he had intended causing his coffee to jump, spilling half of its contents onto to the table. It was cold anyway, Dean thought as he grabbed what was left and dumped it into the bin at the end of the table.

Maybe Sam and his mum were right. While it was becoming clear that this was not working out for him, he should probably go and talk to Dr Williams and see if he could charm his way back into the lectures that he was selling his soul for. He was going to have to wait until the lecture was finished however, as it was still another hour until the lecture ended and Dean decided it was probably a good idea not to show his face in front of the other more dedicated students that were still listening to Dr Williams drone on. He decided to make his way to the university library, there was no point heading all the way home and the way he saw it, perhaps the fact that he had spent the time studying would tip the scales in his favor when he had to approach Dr Williams.

The concrete and glass building of the library stood proudly above the older and more traditional main campus of the university. It had been built a year before Dean had joined in an attempt to, in the words of the university's administration, bring life and vigor back to the university. It did not. The only thing the library had achieved was another place for students to congregate and pretend they were working. As Dean walked in through one of the massive revolving doors, he had the strange feeling he was being watched. He took a quick glance around the main atrium of the library, looking out for anyone who might look a little out of the ordinary. Not seeing anything odd, Dean decided he was being stupid for two reasons. Firstly, he was not in a spy movie, why would anyone want to follow him and secondly, in a place like this, strange was the norm. With that in mind, he trudged up the three flights of stairs to the history section of the library and put the feeling entirely out of his mind.

The lines of bookcases made the library feel a little bit like a maze. Rows upon rows of books lined the dusty shelves and Dean wondered if some of them had ever even been removed based on the level of dust on them. Pacing slowly down the narrow aisles, Dean aimlessly brushed his fingers along the spines of the tomes. Some of these books were nearing a hundred years old and looked like they had been here almost as long, despite the building around them having been here less than a year. As he passed a gap in the bookcases, the unmistakable feeling of being watched returned, sending shivers through his spine. This time there was something odd. Standing a few feet away looking at a bookcase on the history of scientific advancements was a man that just didn't look ordinary. Dean couldn't work out what it was but there seemed to be something odd about him and the fact that he seemed to be trying to stare through the gaps in the books towards him did not sit right with him.

Dean moved around the bookcase to try and get a better look at the strange figure that made his entire being shimmer with a kind of anticipation but as he inched his way towards the section that the man was standing in, he felt a tap on his shoulder. Dean nearly screamed as he leapt almost two feet in the air.

"Jesus Dean, I only wanted to say hello! What's got you so jumpy?" Sam laughed, almost doubled over at the spectacle of Dean who had gone pale in fright. Dean had almost forgotten where he was, focused only on the strange figure.

"Oh...hey Sam" Dean replied, grounding himself back into reality. What was he doing? Had he really had such a bad morning that now he was being followed? He glanced back over towards the section where his phantom had been and, just as he had expected, there was no one there but a couple who were showing way too much affection for a Thursday morning in the library. Dean told himself to get a grip and turned back to Sam who was still laughing at him. Sam was a Geography student and so to bump into him in this section of the library was not uncommon, however it wasn't usually in such a dramatic fashion.

"That's the second time you've made me laugh today" Sam wheezed; his laughing fit finally subsiding. "Those videos of you were fantastic, I'll be keeping them for later use." Dean knew that this wasn't the last he would hear of this situation; he was going to be a laughingstock around his course and certainly amongst his mates. "What are you doing here anyway? I thought you were going to go and talk to Williams?"

"I am but I'm not showing my face in that lecture hall, I'm going to wait until he's back in his office."

"Ah yes, probably a good plan" he nodded. "So, what are you going to do until then?"

"I was just going to hang out here and study I guess, I should probably make some effort after this morning."

"Another good idea, perhaps you should have had some of those earlier" Sam said sarcastically, a smirk plastered across his face. "I would join you, but I've got a lecture of my own to get to and I might even stay in mine for the whole time." That comment earned Sam a playful slap across the shoulder and with that, Sam turned and headed towards the lifts, leaving Dean to find a book to help him with his studies.

*

Dean left it an hour before he decided it was probably safe to show his face on campus again. There was only so long his attention span could last anyway and he had passed that point about fifty minutes ago. He gathered up his stuff, dumped the book onto the returns trolley and trudged his way back down the stairs of the library.

As he walked the short journey back to the main campus, he was almost on autopilot. He had walked this route enough times to know it without thinking and his mind was preoccupied with what he was going to say to Dr Williams. He had decided he was going to be apologetic, but he was unsure about how to approach the situation. His train of thought ended as he reached the university buildings. The History block was a small structure on the outskirts of the campus and was not kept to the same standards that the rest of the campus was. Most first year students lost their way looking for the history offices, Dean included. However, being in his second year, he was able to get there almost without thinking. He took one final inventory of what he planned to say before knocking politely on the door marked Dr Rufus Williams, Professor of History and Anthropology.

"Enter" came a sharp tone from the other side of the door, however it was not the voice of Dr Williams as Dean had been expecting but a female voice. As Dean pushed the door open, he was met with a glare from a rather sincere looking woman. She was dressed in a cardigan that should have been way too warm for the summer warmth and glasses that looked to be from the 1960s, thinking about it, they probably were. The nameplate on the desk identified her as Ms. Anne Butler Dean assumed this was Dr Williams' assistant.

"How can I help you lad?" she asked with an impatience that suggested she had far more important things to be doing than dealing with this irritating university student.

Dean realized he had been standing stupidly in the middle of the office for about ten seconds. "Oh, sorry, I just came to talk to Dr Williams."

"I'm afraid he's not here at the moment."

"Oh, do you know when he will be back?" Dean was starting to think it may have been a waste of time coming here, he wondered if this woman would let him in whether the professor was here or not, she seemed to fancy herself as more of a guardian than an assistant.

"He may not be back for some time, he mentioned that he was taking an unexpected sabbatical and that he didn't know when he would be back."

"Oh..." Dean didn't know where to go from there, he had hyped himself up so much on the walk over that he didn't really have a plan for if Dr Williams wasn't available.

"Are you planning to stand there all day, or can I get on with my work in peace" Ms. Butler said, still staring down her nose at Dean. He decided it was time for him to leave, he clearly wasn't going to see Dr Williams today.

Traipsing back out of the office, he headed out of the block and towards the train station, he wasn't going to be doing any more studying today and the games console was beckoning.

*

The heat on the Friday evening tube was almost unbearable. Dean watched as more and more exhausted workers piled on to the train, he had been pushed further back and now found himself crammed against the door of the tube train with a sweaty armpit in his face.

The commute home was often a difficult one but had been made harder by the midsummer heatwave that had enveloped London and just like the rest of the British people around him, Dean was completely miserable as he stood waiting for the train to carry him home.

As the train rumbled through one of the many dark tunnels of the London Underground, an announcement came over the tannoy system read by a voice that sounded as bored as Dean felt. "Apologies ladies and gentlemen, but due to an issue on the line, we will have to stop the train for a few minutes while we check the tunnel ahead. We apologize for any inconvenience." As if on cue, the train screeched to a halt.

In true British fashion, this announcement was met by a cacophony of sighs and tuts and and a middle-aged woman who was stood facing Dean, rolled her eyes in exasperation. Clearly not an experienced Londoner, the woman decided to strike up a conversation. "This is ridiculous isn't it, why does it always seem to happen at the busiest times?" she asked, looking at him. Dean hated small talk and responded with a small smile and a simple but polite "who knows?"

The woman took the hint and refrained from continuing the conversation but due to the amount of people crammed around her, continued to stare directly at Dean and so now they just looked at each other awkwardly.

While they continued to stare intently at each other, Dean suddenly realised that there was a strange breeze coming from behind him. While he was grateful for the air that was coming from the mysterious draught, he was also confused about where it was coming from as the train was completely sealed up and filled with the bodies of his fellow travelers.

It was at the moment that he decided to stop thinking about it that he was given an excuse not to as the train seemed to elongate in front of him and a swirling mass of blue energy began to form inside the newly stretched space. Dean looked around to see if anyone else had noticed this strange development or if he was suffering from some kind of heat stroke but everyone else seemed to be completely unfazed.

The energy continued to grow until the wind coming out of it threatened to push Dean further down the train. He grabbed hold of the sling hanging from the ceiling and continued to tell himself that he wasn't going mad. This became a little more difficult as a man in a dark jacket and a hood stepped out of the energy in front of him.

"Where and when am I right now, because this is certainly not 1463 is it." The stranger said, looking at Dean through his dark glasses.

Dean stared back at the man, still trying to fathom where he had come from and why the other passengers around him were still acting like it was completely normal for this to happen on the evening commute. Finally, his brain caught up with him enough to be able to respond. "Umm where did you come from?" He asked rather stupidly, realizing he had not answered the question at all.

"I came through a dimensional rift, but this isn't where I'm supposed to be" the stranger said, tapping a few buttons on the small screen attached to a gauntlet on his wrist. Dean continued to stare at him as he did this, still completely confused by what was going on. "Look, this probably isn't going to make any sense to you, and you weren't even meant to be caught up in this, I opened the breach a little too wide and you've been caught in the breach field, that's why only you can see me, but I need to know where this train has come from and where it's heading to."

Dean agreed, this didn't make any sense, but he managed to keep himself from going completely insane long enough to answer the strange man's question. "Well, we left Bank about 2 minutes ago and we should be arriving at City Road soon."

"No, no, no this is all wrong!" The stranger said, tapping some information into his wrist device again. "City Road station shouldn't be here; it was closed in 1922!"

"I'm certain that it wasn't, I travel through it every day, it's not the busiest station but it certainly does exist." Dean said, starting to think that it wasn't him that had gone mad but this crazy man instead.

"No, it doesn't, not anymore, you've been dragged into the alternate timeline that's been created and it's always existed for you, but for me, in the real timeline, it hasn't. Someone is tampering with the timeline, and I don't know how to fix it, I don't even think I can. But if we don't, reality is going to collapse. I need to find someone who can fix this without causing the seams between reality to split further, I'm too involved to do it myself." With that, the stranger pulled a small device out of his pocket and pointed it in front of him. Another wave of energy appeared and this time, Dean knew that he was creating some kind of portal.

"Hey, I'm sorry to have made this so insane for you but hopefully it won't have happened soon, it's either that or the whole of reality is going to implode anyway, so I guess it's not going to be a problem for you either way." As he said that, he tapped his wrist one last time and the energy field opened wide enough for him to step through, leaving Dean standing baffled on the packed train once again. The woman stood in front of him continued to stare and the man sat a few seats down closed his book as an announcement came over the tannoy. "We are now approaching City Road, please mind the gap."


	3. II

With Dr Williams disappearing off on his sabbatical, the majority of Dean's lectures had been cancelled. He had spent the following two weeks roaming around his house while Sam went out to his lectures. He wondered into the lounge in his dressing gown and flumped down on the sofa, phone in hand. Sam was already sat at the table, dressed and eating a slice of toast.

"You're up early" he said, shocked to see Dean out of his bedroom.

"What do you mean early?" Dean asked, "It's not that early."

"No, it isn't for the rest of us but for you, anything before midday is early."

Dean couldn't argue with that, it was rare he got up before the afternoon in recent weeks and with the lectures cancelled, he had no reason to anyway. He figured it was going to be another example of his usual days filled with videogames, binge watching TV series and the occasional adventure to the kitchen for an unhealthy snack.

"So, after my lecture, I need to head into town to pick up a book for next term, fancy meeting me there? We can grab a burger and just wander for a bit." Sam had been trying to get Dean out of the house, or at least dressed for the last week, but Dean didn't see the point.

"No, it's cool mate, I think I will just chill here, I've got no money anyway, I spent it all on drinks at the beginning of term again."

"What if I buy the burgers?" Sam attempted, trying a slightly more enticing tactic. This caused Dean to look up from his phone, the idea of free food was one that never failed to grab his attention.

"I suppose I could be tempted" he replied, grinning at Sam.

"I'll take that as a yes, meet me outside the tube station at eleven. And we'll grab some lunch." With this, Sam added his plate to the pile of crockery that was overflowing out of the kitchen sink and on to the sideboard and grabbed his rucksack from the sofa. "I'll see you in a bit then." He said as he headed for the door.

"You're still paying right?" Dean yelled after him.

"Tight arse!" Sam yelled back as he slammed the door behind him. Dean got up and headed to the kitchen to grab himself a bowl of cereal. "I'd better have a shower if I'm going out." He thought as he poured the cereal into the last clean bowl in the cupboard. Grabbing the milk from the fridge, he gave it a sniff. "Dry cereal it is" he thought.

Dean checked the time on his phone as he stood at the entrance to the Charing Cross underground station. Sam was twenty minutes later than he said he would be so Dean had spent the time people watching. Charing Cross on a midweek lunch hour was throbbing with people rushing in every direction. Some were miserable employees out for their mandated lunch break, while some were tourists and shoppers enjoying the mid July sun, none of which gave Dean even a second look.

Dean felt a tap on the shoulder from behind, finally, he thought. He turned to greet Sam but instead was met by the sight of a young, slightly bedraggled man with a t-shirt that proudly declared BEING MOBILE HAS NEVER BEEN EASIER! Not a very catchy slogan Dean thought, but before he could tell the salesman that he was not interested in a phone contract and that he actually already had one, he was met with an onslaught of information concerning low prices and tariffs. As he reached the end of his clearly well-rehearsed speech, Dean spotted Sam exiting the tube station, taking this as an opportunity to escape, he politely told the salesman he wasn't interested and rushed over to Sam before he could get caught again.

"Great timing, he nearly had me buying a 24-month contract for a phone I don't even own, I swear these guys have some kind of psychic powers."

Sam laughed "That's what you get for standing still in this kind of area, rookie error."

"I wouldn't have to, if you were on time, anyway you are buying these burgers or not, I'm starving." Dean said as he held the door open to the new burger bar that had popped up directly opposite the book shop, these companies really knew how to coerce students into buying fast food.

As they ate, Dean checked his phone. He had been getting messages from his mum daily to ask if he had sorted the situation with his lecturer yet and today was no different. He chose to ignore most of them.

"Still getting grief from your mum?" Sam asked, noticing Dean hadn't responded to the text.

"Yeah, she messages me almost every day about this whole thing with Dr Williams but there's nothing I can do, no one seems to know where he's gone, he didn't tell anyone, just took all his annual leave at the same time and disappeared. No one even knows when he will be back." Dean explained as he took a bite out of his burger.

"That is weird" Sam agreed. "You'd have thought he would have at least dropped you an email or something right? Almost sounds like he left in a hurry." Suddenly his eyes widened, and he looked as if he was about to drop the chips in his hand.

"What?" Dean asked looking around, expecting to see some kind of spectacle in the burger bar.

"What if he's been abducted by aliens!" Sam exclaimed, keeping his voice low.

Dean stared at him.

Sam couldn't keep it up any longer and burst out laughing. "Your face!" he cried.

"For Christ's sake, Sam, I thought you'd finally lost it" Dean rolled his burger wrapper into a ball and stuffed it into the box it all came in. "Anyway, are we getting this book of yours?"

Sam had just finished his own burger and had matched Dean in combining the rubbish of his meal. "What are you going to do while I'm looking for this book? You're not going to follow me around like a little lost puppy, are you?"

"Ha-ha" Dean answered sarcastically as he dumped the rubbish of both meals into the bin outside the restaurant. "No, I will probably head to the sci-fi and fantasy section and see if they've got that new Space Forge book yet."

"Nerd." Sam Jabbed at him as they walked through into the air-conditioned hall of the book shop. "Right, I'll see you in ten then." Sam said as he trudged up the stairs to the non-fiction section.

The Sci-Fi and Fantasy section was a quiet corner in the back of the shop that consisted of 4 small bookshelves. There weren't often people who came to this section and like the books it housed, Dean used it as a little space of escapism. It was here that he could find all the books that his mother disapproved of.

Running his fingers along the spines, he browsed carefully until he reached what he was looking for. The latest book in a long running sci-fi series. The cover was emblazoned with a spaceship of some kind, floating above a planet in a futuristic war, lasers flying left and right. Dean loved this kind of thing, sometimes he wished he could be a character in these stories, they always seemed far more exciting than his real world of lectures and rent. It's all fiction though, he thought as he dragged himself back to reality. There's no way he would ever find himself in a mad adventure through space and time, he didn't even think it was likely to happen to anyone in his lifetime.

Thumbing his way through the crisp pages of the book, he was careful not to read any of the words written within at risk of spoiling the story for himself. The last book had ended on a big cliff hanger and he had no intention of ruining the excitement of finding out what happened next. He closed the book and took one last look at the shelves around him to see if there was anything else, he wanted to buy. Deciding that one was enough for now, he turned to head back across the shop to the counter.

However, his path was blocked. A tall man was stood directly in front of him facing in the opposite direction. The back of his shirt was emblazoned with the logo of the bookshop. "Excuse me." Dean said politely in an attempt to push past, but the man stood completely still. Dean walked in front of him and waved his hand across his face. His eyes were open but seemed to be completely transfixed on something on the other side of the shop. Following his glare, Dean noticed he wasn't the only one. Everyone one in the shop seemed to be stood completely still.

"Don't worry, you're not going mad." The voice came from behind, in the corner where moments ago, Dean had been browsing Sci-Fi fiction. He jumped around ready to make a measly attempt at fighting whoever had somehow managed to sneak behind him, his only weapon a paperback book.

"Don't worry I have no intention of hurting you." The voice belonged to a man with closely cropped hair, the dark skin of his face an emotionless mask. Despite not knowing much about such things, Dean knew he was wearing an outfit that didn't seem to match any current fashion trends and was way too warm for the current climate. His tight trousers looked uncomfortable yet practical, covered in large pockets and his jacket was dark and panelled in something that almost looked like some kind of lightweight metal.

"Who are you? What have you done to everyone?" Dean gestured around the shop at the currently frozen customers and workers.

"Don't worry, I haven't hurt them either, I have simply put the shop in a state of temporal grace."

"State of temporary what?"

"Temporal grace" the man repeated carefully. "Essentially I have put a bubble around the building in which time will not move, it is a little like being put in the freezer, ready to be defrosted and continued whenever I choose."

"What about the people outside?" Dean asked.

"That's sorted as well, the bubble also acts as a perception filter, anyone who looks inside will see a normal operating book shop, and anyone that considers coming in will reconsider before they reach the door."

"I see." Dean muttered, however the confusion he was feeling was enough to tell him that he did not, in fact, see at all.

"Look, I know this is likely to be confusing and a little scary, but it is really important that I talk to you. We've met once before, on a train."

Dean suddenly remembered the strange journey he had had on the train a couple of weeks ago. He had assumed he had some kind of heat stroke and went straight to bed when he got home, nothing of the sort had happened since and so he had assumed that that was the case. But this strange man was stood in front of him, his outfit a little too futuristic to fit in and the technology in his hand like something Dean had never seen before. It all came rushing back. This was the same man that he had seen on the train. It hadn't been a dream or the result of a mind that was struggling with the heat of the summer sun, it had been real.

"Wait I've met someone like you before, on a train. He came out of nowhere like you did and he froze everyone as well!" Dean gulped back the rest of the babble that was about to explode out of his mouth.

The man stood and waited for Dean's mind to catch up with his mouth. "yes, that was one of my colleagues, it's complicated and would take me days to explain fully and even then, I'm not sure you'd fully understand." He said slightly impatiently.

"Rude" Dean mumbled.

The man sighed and continued despite Dean's interruption. "Look, my name is Harrison Clarke, and the short answer is that I am one of a group of agents called the Sustainers. Our job is to ensure time is not disrupted and fix it when it is. For some reason, you're important, we have no idea why, but something is special about you."

"Does there have to be a reason, can I not just be important?" Dean asked hopefully.

"In my experience, everyone has their own reason to be important, no one is unimportant, you've just got to make sure you use it right. But no one else seems to be linked to the time vortex like you are. Its unheard of and we can't explain it."

Dean felt a little bubble of pride rise in his chest, even if it was weird and this guy was probably some kind of lunatic, at least the lunatic thought he was important.

"Anyway, we keep ending up being drawn to you, it's like something is forcing our tech to go to your time and place. Remember that day on the train? That wasn't supposed to happen, I was actually chasing a technological signal in the fifteenth century and somehow ended up on that train with you. We assumed the tech was damaged, that happens from time to time. But it's become more and more frequent. We've been trying to avoid bumping into you as much as possible, but we've had thirty-two incidents where we have been dragged off course and ended up near you. One agent even ended up in the bathroom while you were in the shower that was almost a rather embarrassing encounter." Clarke scratched his head awkwardly with that admission.

Dean had to bite his tongue to stop himself from laughing, this was completely absurd! Why would this be happening to him, he hadn't done anything even remotely special and he certainly wasn't likely to anytime soon. "So, why are you here now? Because what you said earlier about the temporal thingy made it sound like you planned to be here this time."

"Good. You catch on quickly. Yes, I have been sent to retrieve you."

"Retrieve me? Like an alien abduction?" Dean said, the sudden fear, visible on his face.

"No, nothing like that, I'm not even alien for a start, we just want to bring you in, get a couple of scans done, see why you're so interesting to the vortex, and then you can go back to normal."

"What if I choose not to come with you?" Dean said, crossing his arms in an attempt to look defiant.

"Then I'm afraid I'm going to have to take you anyway, the risk of you being a paradox that could destroy time is too great. I would much rather we do this the easy way." He tapped a few commands into the device on his wrist, causing a portal to open up in front of them. He held out his hand to Dean. "So, what's it to be? Easy way?"

Dean decided it was going to be far easier to accept what was happening, at least he would have some modicum of control that way. The last thing he needed was to wake up god knows where, strapped to a table. He still had alien abductions on his mind. He grabbed the hand in front of him and followed him through the portal.

As soon as the portal closed, the bookshop returned to its normal busy state. The worker that had previously been in Dean's way bent forward to pick up a copy of the latest Space Forge book. Strange, he was sure that it hadn't been on the floor a moment ago and was there not a young lad there before.


	4. III

The new surroundings appeared around Dean as quickly as the bookshop had disappeared, however before he could take stock of where he was, he found himself bent double, vomiting on the previously glistening floor.

"Ahh yes, I should probably have warned you about that, the vortex hops can be rough if you're not used to it." Clarke said, supressing a small laugh.

Dean stood up and wiped his mouth clean. Being careful to avoid stepping in what was left of the burger he had had less than half an hour ago. Although that now seemed like years ago. "Where are we?" He asked.

Clarke spread his arm wide, gesturing at the wide room they now found themselves stood in. "This is the Nexus, it is our base of sorts, we operate all of our business out of here."

"Ok but where are we?" Dean asked again, making it clear that Clarke's response didn't really answer his original question.

"Well, that is a little harder to explain."

As Clarke said this, Dean noticed a window on the wall behind him, where the portal would have been moments ago. He pressed his hands against the cold glass and stared out at the skyline in front of him. "No, it isn't, that's central London." He said, pointing at the unmistakable skyscrapers of London. At a guess based on the location of some of the more famous buildings, he would assume they were in the Gherkin, one of London's weirder high rises.

"I'm afraid it's not".

"What do you mean, it's not? Of course, it is. That's Big Ben in the distance and down there, that's the Tower of London." As he said this, Clarke began to tap on his wrist device again, Dean was beginning to wonder if there was anything these devices couldn't do and where he could get one. As he tapped one last command, the skyline in front of him along with the window itself disappeared as if it had never been there.

"We use that as a way to make people feel a little more comfortable when they first arrive in the Nexus, it's a live image but it's not where we really are."

Dean didn't feel comfortable at all. In fact, what had just happened had only made him feel the opposite. He was now more confused that he had been before. He could feel the bile rising in his throat again.

Noticing the look on Dean's face, Clarke decided it was probably best that he explain what was going on before he made another mess, the clean-up crew were already going to be livid about the first one. "In the most basic way, I can explain it, we are in a kind of separate, man-made dimension from the world you are used to. The Nexus isn't technically outside the universe, but it isn't inside it either."

"So, we are in the shed and the normal world is the house?" Dean asked, trying to imagine an analogy that made sense to him.

"I don't think you could make it sound any less glamourous, but yes, that is a surprisingly good way to describe it. We call it a temporal pocket. The shed, as you call it, is in a kind of bubble hidden just a second out of sync with real time" Clarke explained.

Dean nodded. The shed analogy helped him to understand to some extent but in reality, his mind had melted a while ago and he was just coasting through at this point.

Moving away from the corridor that they had appeared in, Clarke lead Dean into a bustling room full of desks and computers. His first thought was that it looked very similar to a bull pen from a police detective TV show, but instead of wooden desks and laptop, everything was gleaming white and futuristic. Everywhere he looked there was another agent dressed a little like Clarke in the odd but practical outfit that it appeared these people all seemed to wear.

"The Nexus was first founded in the 25th Century. Time travel had been invented sixty years prior and people had been using it without thinking of the consequences." Clarke explained as they paced slowly around the room. "Objects and people kept popping up in the wrong time periods and the timeline was getting weaker and weaker. When it was discovered, the Sustainers were tasked with fixing the issues caused by irresponsible time travel. We've been doing it ever since."

Dean marvelled at what Clarke was saying, the idea of this organisation having been around for many years but also at the same time having not been founded yet was confusing, but he was beginning to get the hang of it.

"Let me introduce you to the Captain. He's been working as a Sustainer for longer than any of us, some of the younger recruits think he's been here since the start. In all honesty, they're not far off the truth."

They had now reached a desk at the other end of the room to where they had entered. Behind it sat a tall man, his broad shoulders filling out his jacket, decorated with a collection of accolades. His face held a stern expression that was covered by a carefully trimmed beard that seemed to frame his face perfectly. This was a man who clearly cared about the little things, ensuring everything was carefully controlled.

"Agent Clarke, who do you have here?" He boomed as they approached. His voice seemed to fill the room despite him talking in a fairly relaxed manner.

"This is the POI we've been looking for" Clarke responded respectfully.

The captain's face softened as he said this, his lips twitching into a slight smile. "Ahh wonderful!" He said looking at Dean. "Your name son?"

"Dean Wells" Dean said quickly, despite the warmth that had appeared on the Captain's face, he was still a little scared of the imposing figure before him, there was something about him that exuded authority. He extended his hand across the desk and Dean grasped it in a firm handshake. "My name is Captain Viribus, I'm the man that you'll be reporting to if you decide to help us around here."

Clarke jumped in at this point, noticing the look on Dean's face in response to the Captain's unusual name. "The Captain's name is not his real one. Once you rise to a position of power within the organisation, you get assigned another name. It's a kind of codename created by the AI that we have running this place."

"What does it mean?"

"To be completely honest, we're not sure, the system designates it, we have no say in what we get given and it's never something simple. But it helps us to remain anonymous on a mission, there are lots of reasons why giving out names can be dangerous when time travelling, you could easily give it to someone who hates your ancestor and get yourself into a world of trouble. It's fine for us lower agents but for the leaders who are going around far more frequently than us, it's too dangerous."

The Captain sat quietly as Clarke spoke, satisfied with the way the minute details of his operation was being explained. "But of course, you've been causing me a lot of problems young man." He said, finally, getting to the reason Dean was here.

Dean felt as if he was fourteen again and being scalded by his school's head teacher for getting into a fight in the playground. This captain was patronising without even trying it would seem, Dean assumed that was a quality that came with authority. "I'm sorry sir, I don't know what is going on, I don't know why I'm causing trouble, I'm not important."

"Ah, but that's just it, it would seem you are." The Captain said, getting up from his desk. "Let me show you something." He walked over to a screen on the wall and with a wave of his hand, brought it to life. Dean was now showed a kind of wavy line cutting across the centre of the screen. It seemed to be moving in a rough pattern. "This is the Matrix of time. It is the closest we can get to creating a model of the vortex in a way that is perceivable by the human mind."

Dean begged to differ, but he kept quiet while the Captain continued to explain. "Now if I project the recent trips of the Sustainers currently employed at the Nexus onto the Matrix, we get this." The line was now littered with little red dots, covering almost all of the Matrix. But there was one area that seemed to be populated far more that the rest of the line.

"You'll have noticed that there is an anomaly." The Captain said, echoing Dean's thoughts exactly. He pointed at the cluster or dots and the matrix zoomed in. "This is a record of over three hundred trips. Only two of which were intentional. Can you see what the link is?"

"Yes, they're all within my lifetime" Dean said, noticing the dates that had appeared on the Matrix. Every single one of the dots that the Captain had focussed on were spread out from the moment he was born, to Agent Clarke meeting him in the bookshop.

"Correct. Now, if that was all that was going on, it wouldn't be too much of a problem."

"But there's a catch." Dean said, he had seen situations like this before.

"Precisely. It would seem that you're not only drawing my agents out but you're also keeping them their jobs." Viribus waved his hand across the screen and the matrix zoomed out to show the full Matrix once again. But this time there were lines streaking across the map, connecting dots. Dean wondered what the reason for these lines were and then he spotted it, they were all connected to one of the dots in the cluster over his lifetime. "Each and every event that demands our attention seems to be linked somehow to you. It is as if you are causing them without knowing it.

"How though?" Dean was starting to panic. How could all of these problems throughout time be linked to him? He knew he could be useless, but he wasn't so bad that he was going to bring about the end of the world, was he?

"We're not sure. It shouldn't be possible. The only way this could be happening is if you had some kind of Paradox machine."

"A what?"

"It's a kind of backwards time machine. Where a time machine or the devices we use are used to travel and observe the events, a paradox machine is created to interfere, to change. Every time period that a paradox machine travels to can be distorted and damaged." Clarke explained. Dean had almost forgotten he was even there. "They are almost impossible to create, there has only ever been one that we are aware of, but it was destroyed not long after the Nexus was created, along with the ability to create one."

"Anyway, this is why we need you." The captain interrupted, before Clarke could go too far into the history of the Nexus, he was known to ramble on about these things if given the chance. "You obviously don't have a paradox machine, and we've checked your timeline, you're clean. So, you're not causing it knowingly but there is something very clearly wrong and that's why we have a proposition for you. We need you to join us a Sustainer, we figure that if you are the one doing the job, you can't be dragged to yourself."

Dean stared at the Captain. "I don't think that's a good idea." He said. "I don't know how to fix time; I can't even complete a degree properly."

"Not to worry, we will have our best Sustainer train you, and besides this isn't a permanent engagement, it will only be until we have solved the mystery surrounding you and then you are free to return to your studies."

Dean thought about the captain's proposition, if someone had told him this morning he would be considering signing up as a time traveller, he would have thought they were insane. But here he was, in a place that should have been impossible, discussing impossible things. However, it was his mother's words from that phone call all those weeks ago. I was hoping it might help you to finally grow up and be mature. Maybe this was a chance for him to do something worthwhile, like his mother had wanted. He couldn't complete a degree but maybe he could save the world, even his mother couldn't argue with that. Not that she would believe him.

"Ok, I'm in."

"Marvelous!" The Captain said, clapping his hands together. "We will get you set up in the Nexus for now, I think this is going to be a situation in which we keep hold of you though Dean, it will limit the chances of more strain on the temporal corridors." The look on Dean's face caused the Captain to change his approach. "But of course, you won't be a prisoner, you'll be free to go wherever you like within the Nexus and you'll be an integral part of the team as long as you are here."

Dean considered the fact that he may have bitten off more than he could chew here. He had gone from lounging around playing video games to living in a time agency.

Clarke set Dean up in a small makeshift apartment for the time being, it had everything he would need. A small bathroom, a bed and a TV that doubled as a tactical screen just like they had in the main bullpen of the Nexus. However, the most exciting feature Dean came across was a food dispenser. Clarke told him this would dispense any food he could think of, he just had to type it into the search engine attached and it would appear on a small plate at the top of the machine. Dean found this more exciting than the prospect of time travel itself and immediately tried it out. Typing cheeseburger into the search bar was rewarded with an almost instantaneous bleep from the machine and the glorious smell of a freshly cooked burger.

"It takes it straight out of a random time zone, causes a few confused diner workers and shop owners but doesn't cause any damage and keeps us fed, we see it as our reward for repeatedly saving the timeline. Plus, it's usually the best stuff."

Dean took a bite and gasped, Clarke wasn't lying, the burger was the best he had ever tasted, and it took all of his willpower not to demolish the rest, but he knew they had more pressing matters. Leaving the apartment behind, Clarke led Dean down the hall.

"There's one more person you need to meet. He is our historical advisor and helps us to understand what is going on in the time periods that we jump to and he stays in our ear the whole time we're there to make sure we don't change any major historical events and cause paradoxes of our own, therefore he is going to be working very closely with you on your missions."

Clarke opened the door at the end of the hall, it looked like a part of the Nexus that wasn't used very often. He knocked on the door politely and a gruff voice came from the other side. "Enter." Clarke pushed open the door and gestured for Dean to enter ahead of him.

"Dean this is..."

"Dr Williams?!" Dean exclaimed, interrupting Clarke, mid-sentence. The man sitting behind the desk in the dark office that seemed to double as a small library was his very own professor.

"Oh...well...yes, that is his name. How did you know that?" Clarke said, looking between the pair.

"Because he was one of my students a long time ago" Dr Williams said, "If I remember correctly, we didn't part on the best of terms, did we Mr. Wells."

Dean was suddenly feeling rather awkward, this was a man who, not two weeks ago had kicked him out of a lecture and then disappeared off the face of the earth, however the fact that he was here solved that mystery. Suddenly, it dawned on Dean what Dr Williams had just said. "Hold on, did you just say I was your student a long time ago? It's only been two weeks." He said.

"For you, yes. However, I have been working here for almost twenty years now. I'm sure it has been explained to you how everything works here and hopefully you can understand how I can have been for twenty years and yet only have been gone for two weeks."

Dean nodded, more time manipulation he thought, it scared him a little bit that that was becoming the norm for him.

"I have been told that once we have fixed this unique problem, I can retire from this unique profession, but I feel I may have a hard time explaining why I have aged so considerably in the space of two weeks."

Dean had to smile at this, the thought of a lecturer walking in and suddenly looking twenty years older was certainly bound to raise some issues. Dr Williams returned his smile with a little chuckle and for the first time Dean found himself getting on with his lecturer. Perhaps the strange situation they found themselves in was enough to bridge the gap between them, even if just in a professional capacity.

"Anyway, enough of this time wasting, let's get down to business." Dr Williams said. There's the man I'm used to, Dean thought. He knew it wouldn't last. "We need to start thinking about preparing you for the missions you are going to be going out on. Agent Clarke, do we know where we are sending him yet?"

"We had a recent blip in the late nineteenth century, it is likely that that will be his first mission. Clarke responded.

"Ahh brilliant." Dr Williams walked over to one of his bookcases and began pulling out a collection of large hardback books. "The nineteenth century is a fascinating era, but you are going to have to be careful, there's plenty of things that you can find yourself getting wrong, and we don't want that. So, while I can be in your ear giving you tips, you are going to need to have some knowledge of the period yourself." He slammed a pile of books down onto the desk in front of Dean. The top one, Dean noticed, was entitled A Portrait of the Nineteenth Century World." It did not sound thrilling. "As you weren't the most attentive student." He raised an eyebrow judgingly at Dean. "You are going to need to examine these thoroughly in order to be ready for your mission.

Dean grabbed the books and glanced at Clarke, who was trying to stifle his laughter at the amount of reading he now had to do.

"I will check on you in a few days to see how you are getting on, but for now, if you could leave my office, I have a lot of work to do and I am rather busy researching medieval peasantry dress. As much as I respect Captain Viribus, that man is obsessed with accurate clothing."

Dean took that as his cue to leave and left through the door that was once again being held open by Agent Clarke, making sure to say thank you to Dr Williams on his way out. The last thing he wanted to do was upset him again, even if it was twenty years ago for him.

"OK go and drop those books in your apartment and then meet me in the bullpen, now we really begin your training."

"Already?" Dean asked.

"No time like the present." Clarke said. "And besides, this is the fun bit." He grinned at Dean with the kind of grin that suggested he wasn't lying about the fun part.


	5. IV

Clarke told Dean to get into some lighter clothes, he took that to mean the kind of clothes he would wear to the gym, not that that was a place he frequented. However, when he returned five minutes later, he was wearing a pair of shorts and a form fitting t-shirt as well as pair of running trainers.

He walked into the room Clarke directed him to, still tugging at the uncomfortably tight gym shirt. He quickly forgot about his shirt though when he caught sight of what was in front of him. In the center of the room, surrounded by drones zipping around her at head height, a woman was leaping about wildly. Each time one of the many drones got into reaching distance, she would lunge or kick with almost inhuman speed, slamming the mechanical enemies into the ground with force enough to break them apart. When she had reduced all but one of the drones to a collection of broken parts and debris on the ground around her, she finally stood still, keeping one eye on the final drone.

"Be with you in a moment" she said glancing over at Dean and Clarke. By the time she had turned her full attention back to her final metal adversary, it had circled back around and was hovering a few feet in front of her. She grinned and charged, leaping just moments before she reached it. She grabbed the drone with both hands and clung on as it sped around the room, doing its best to shake her off. As it reached one of the room's walls, she planted her feet on the wall and used the momentum to flip herself backwards, taking the drone with her and slamming it into the ground, using her full body weight to smash it in two. One half of the drone attempted to twitch its way back to life, but she stamped the last vestige of fight out of it with a heavy boot.

"Sorry about that." She said as she marched over to where Dean was stood, his mouth agape at the spectacle he had just witnessed. "Those training drones are getting fiercer Clarke, what you been doing to them?"

Clarke chuckled. "Nothing like that, I know they are self-repairing, but there's only so much they can fix. No wonder we have to keep ordering more if that's what you're doing to them." Dean glanced across the room as Clarke said this and sure enough the pieces of metal were lacing themselves back together and then hovering back into a small hole at the back of the room.

Dean's attention was brought back to the woman in front of him by a hand being thrust into his eye line. Despite having just fought a deployment of mechs, she didn't seem to have even broke a sweat. Her dirty blonde hair was pulled back into a neat braid and her arms, bared by the vest top she was wearing, gave away her strength, her skin rippling with muscles in places Dean wasn't sure he had ever had. While she looked like she could crush Dean with a single movement, her eyes told a different story, there was a playful manner in the way she was glaring at Dean.

"Evie Pryde, and you must be this pain in the arse that's got the whole Nexus on high alert."

Dean shook the hand that was offered to him and nodded in response to her question. Suddenly he realized he hadn't actually given her his name and at risk of being known as 'pain in the arse' for the whole time he worked here, he cleared his throat and worked his voice into action. "Dean." He managed.

"Pardon me?" Evie raised one eyebrow, confused at this random utterance.

"Dean, Dean Wells, it's my name" he repeated, managing to string more than one word together this time.

"Ahh there we go! A sentence!" she cried, in a way that made it sound like Dean had managed something far more impressive. The mocking was not lost on him, but she smirked at him to make sure.

"Now, let's cut to the chase shall we, what experience have you got?"

"What do you mean?" Dean replied, scratching his head.

"Combat experience? What have you done before?" Evie said, growing impatient.

"Nothing. Why would I have done?" he paused. "Should I have done?"

"Karate?" she asked.

"No."

"Taekwondo?"

No."

"Any kind of weapons proficiency?"

"No. Not in real life anyway."

"If you mention Call of Duty right now, I will scream." Evie said, glaring at him.

Dean decided to suppress his explanation of his weapons knowledge that he had gained from various videogames and opted to ask a question instead. "Was I supposed to have done all of these things?"

"No, but I thought you might have at least had a hobby." She replied, rolling her eyes. "It looks like I have my work cut out for me here. Clarke, you can leave him to me now, I'll bring him back to the bullpen when he can at least throw a punch." Dean got the feeling that being left alone with this woman was not strictly safe, but it would seem the decision was out of his hands as Clarke nodded politely and left without even a second glance. As he turned back to Evie, he was met with a fist flying at speed to his face. The connection was hard, the punch having not been pulled at all.

He rubbed at his jaw and looked at her wide eyed. "Err...Ow! What was that for?"

"Lesson number one, never turn your back on your enemy, you will get punched in the face."

"What? Every time?" He asked.

"Well, no not every time, but I enjoy teaching that lesson." She beamed.

Dean noted that this was not going to be an enjoyable experience and if he wanted to avoid getting the living daylights beaten out of him, he was going to have to learn fast.

Dean didn't realize quite how long they had been at it, but his body certainly did. He had been punched, kicked, dropped and thrown more times than he could count. But he had also managed to throw a few of his own punches and block a couple of Evie's. As he pulled his aching body back from a semi successful, Evie held up her hands.

"I think we'll stop there, there's certainly some potential in there...somewhere." she said. Dean decided this was probably the best compliment he was going to get. "You're not bad at defending yourself, but we need to work on the offence, your punches feel a little bit like that of an eight-year-old girl at the moment." She grinned.

Dean had gotten used to the verbal abuse, it was Evie's greatest skill and when used right, perhaps also her greatest weapon. But Dean had learnt to respond in kind. "Get punched by a lot of eight-year-old girls do you?" he said, giving her the same self-satisfied grin.

Evie chuckled and lobbed a towel at him teasingly. She was enjoying the verbal sparring almost as much as the physical, Dean had been nervous to begin with but once she had gotten him warmed up, she had found he could be just as cheeky and sarcastic as she prided herself on being. It was rare she got to have an equal in that arena.

Dean caught the towel and mopped the sweat from his face. "So, what happens now that you've gotten bored of beating me up?" he asked.

"For now, we eat, sleep, train, and repeat."

"Isn't that a song?"

"Something like that, but that's your life until I deem you ready, I'm afraid."

Dean wasn't sure whether he was annoyed or relieved. Now that he knew about what happened at the Nexus and what was at stake, he wanted to get out there and get started but at the same time, he wasn't a massive fan of the idea of getting himself killed on his first mission.

Once they had cleared up the dojo, as Evie called it, they both headed to their respective rooms. It had been midafternoon when Dean had been taken from the bookstore and despite there being no real sense of time in the Nexus, Dean knew it had to be getting late. As he lay down on the thin mattress of his bed, he thought back on the day he had had. It felt like weeks since he had had lunch with Sam, when the most important consideration he had in his head was who was paying for the burgers. Now he had to think about training, paradoxes and saving the world. Sleep didn't come easy.

He glanced at the digital clock built into the wall above the bed. Clarke had told him that it was programmed to show the time of whatever region the owner of the room was from and currently it read 02:35. The nexus was quiet, everyone that wasn't on assignment was asleep and the usual buzz of the building was muted. Dean decided to get up and go to the bathroom. As he was washing his hands, he listened to the soft mechanical whir of the machines running the Nexus and the water of the tap, both sounds sounded eerily loud at this late hour.

He turned off the tap and looked up at the mirror above the sink and nearly screamed out in fright. The face looking back at him was not his own. Except it was, but it was...wrong. Something about his features weren't recognizable as his own. This was him, but not from now. It was like his face had been edited to look 30 years older. His cheeks and brow were lined with deep crevices of a man who had spent most of his life frowning. There were scars that he couldn't explain, and his chin had a covering of hair that he had never had. Was this his own face from the future? The face seemed to be screaming something, but no sound came out. It was like it was caught in a permanent cry of pain.

He looked down at his hands to check if they too had aged but the skin of his hands was still young. He looked back up at the mirror to inspect the condition of his face once again but was met with surprise once again. His reflection was his own now and the haggard version of himself was gone as if it had never been there at all. He turned his head to the side and this time the reflection followed. The mirror was a mirror once more.

"This stuff must begetting to me" he muttered to himself as he trudged back to his bed. Making a mental note to mention this to Clarke in the morning, he closed his eyes, stillhoping to get some sleep, but if he was struggling before, now he had nochance. The version of himself that he had seen seemed to be etched onto his mind.


End file.
